Gio: I apologize

Nationals Pitching Is Still Excellent After A Weird Week of Outings | May:

'via Blog this'

Hey man, so sorry about that whole mediocre thing.  Believe me, had you just said that you had found the strike zone on the cross country flight from Oakland to DC I wouldn't have written it.  Really.  And as long as you know to find that elusive strike zone, boy you are really good.

A couple of other thoughts:

I was pondering a post about the Brett Lawrie/Bill Miller umpire incident focused not on the helmet throwing visual but the obvious "I'll show you" call the umpire.  I was going to write about how while I can't condone Lawrie reaction, I can understand it.  That was Ball 4 by any measure and it was so clearly a case where an umpire let a personal disagreement influence his judgement.  As unprofessional as it was for Lawrie to throw the helmet, it was equally unprofessional for that call.  I was also going to point out how baseball wouldn't do a damn thing (at least publicity) to Miller.

So they decided to suspend another umpire Bob Davidson for who knows what.

Umpiring is tough job and to their credit, they are right a lot more than you would think.  And I can understand why MLB keeps umpiring discipline a closely guarded secret. They don't want to give the impression that one guy is a problem. Understood.   Hopefully they are sending the long overdue message to the umpires that people don't care if you get "shown up." They don't pay to see you.  If you become part of the story, you have failed.  I will be interested to see how the union reacts. My guess is they go ballistic.

The fact that no plan as ever withstood contact with reality is cold comfort for GM Rizzo.  I would be the first to say that he had quite a nice little catching plan in place a week ago.  Two young well rounded backstops and a nearly ready one waiting in reserve.  There are a lot of teams that would love to have a stash of potential quality catchers like that.  And then its gone.  Nothing you can do about what happened.  All I'll say is remember the process was right and don't panic!

When can we start worrying about Zim's lack of power?  Defense and good AB's don't make a $100m player.  Need some more out of you.

Ian -- its great that you can hit home runs.  Fantastic.  However, between you and me, I'd trade your home runs for 30 points of OBP.  .330 is all I'm asking for.

Another feather in GM Rizzo's cap at least so far this year is the marked improvement in the Nat's bench.  Actual dangerous PH's lurk making these late inning rallies a lot easier to assemble.

edited to reflect the fact that the umpire suspended wasn't the guy involved in the Lawrie incident.  Although it should have been.